Civil Liberties

The Abuses Of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) And Border Patrol Agents Is Outrageous!

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It is now clear that there are a multitude of agents who work for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and for the Border Patrol, who are abusing migrant women and children in Texas and Florida and elsewhere, including verbal, emotional, and physical abuse, including the deaths of at least six children.

There is racism, misogyny, and sexual abuse going on, and these agents do not speak foreign languages, and ignore the sufferings of children who will be scarred for life by their horrible experiences.

Most of these people have tried to escape from bloodshed, persecution, violence, and abuse in their Central Americans nations, and yet are being denied the right to apply for asylum, and are now living through a literal nightmare often worse than what they escaped.

This is an outrage, against the Bill of Rights and condemns Donald Trump as the worst abuser of civil rights and liberties of any President of the United States.

The racism, nativism, misogyny, white supremacy, and purely disgusting human behavior being seen and reported is a scar on the American nation, and there is a dire need for a quick firing of at least a large portion of ICE and the Border Patrol, and a rapid reorganization of those agencies, which are presently perceived as Nazi and Fascist in their image and actions.

On July 4, Independence Day, this horrific situation is a stain on the American celebration of its 243rd birthday!

Ronald Reagan, in his last speech as President a day before he retired from the Presidency in 1989, glowed about the virtues of immigration, which he said had made us a greater and stronger nation, and he spoke of the glory of the Statue of Liberty, representing open arms for the refugees from all nations, escaping bloodshed, persecution, and oppression, and starting a new life in the haven on earth known as America!

It is a certainty that Ronald Reagan, the paragon of conservatism, would be appalled at what Donald Trump has done on immigration, and the fact that the Republican Party officeholders have nothing to say, condemns all of them to the garbage heap of history, as having stood by and ignored the massive violation of human rights, and actual war crimes being committed by ICE and the Border Patrol, by criminal elements that have bragged about and ridiculed the sufferings of innocent men, women and children on Facebook.

One can be sure that Karma will visit these evil forces, and eventually, many will be held accountable as among the worst elements ever to exist in American government in modern times!

Donald Trump And Disposal Of Human Rights, The Goal Of Jimmy Carter Four Decades Ago

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In the late 1970s, President Jimmy Carter enunciated his belief in human rights, and pursued a policy of denunciation of those nations which denied human rights to their citizens.

Now, four decades later, President Donald Trump has totally reversed such a policy, and has embraced leaders of nations which massively violate human rights.

So we see Trump embracing Vladimir Putin of the Russian Federation ; Kim Jong Un of North Korea; Xi Jinping of China; Mohammed Bin Salman of Saudi Arabia; Abdel Fattah el-Sissi of Egypt; Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey; Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines; Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil; Jaroslaw Kaczynski of Poland; Viktor Orban of Hungary; and other authoritarians who deny basic civil rights and civil liberties to their citizens, and persecute minorities and immigrants in their midst, and threaten journalists, extremely alarming and disturbing.

At the same time, Trump attacks and is critical of the leaders of the United Kingdom, France, Germany, South Korea, Japan, Canada and the other nations in NATO, and it is clear that he is enamored with dictators over democratic leaders.

In so doing, Trump is undermining the concept of liberal democracy, and destroying American constitutional principles, damaging the image of America, and destabilizing international affairs.

The Most Evil Man In The US Senate: Mitch McConnell Of Kentucky, Setting Out To Destroy The Legal System And Legal Precedents!

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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky clearly is the most evil man in the Senate, setting out to destroy the legal system and legal precedents that have been accomplished over many decades and administrations.

He is striving, successfully, to set up a judicial system which will set America back legally for the next thirty years, as his legacy. His refusal to allow a hearing for Merrick Garland, Barack Obama’s nominee to replace Antonin Scalia in 2016, and the rushed confirmation of many unqualified and despicable district court and circuit nominees for life terms in office is insuring a gloomy future for civil rights and civil liberties. And now, he has said he will push the confirmation of a Supreme Court judge if either Ruth Bader Ginsburg or Stephen Breyer were to leave the Court in 2020.

His corruption is out of control, and his wife, Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao, has clearly been involved in corrupt financial actions while working for Donald Trump. This power couple should not be able to have such power and influence, with the obvious conflict of interest that promotes their support of Donald Trump, and unwillingness on the part of McConnell to challenge the President on his abuse of power and obstruction of justice.

Hopefully, again they will pay the price in legal charges brought against Elaine Chao, and the defeat of Mitch McConnell for reelection in 2020. Mitch McConnell has violated his oath of office and subverted the democratic process. And Elaine Chao has proved she is yet another of the corrupt cabinet officers under Donald Trump!

230th Anniversary Of The American Presidency: Now In Greatest Crisis Of Its Entire History

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Today, April 30, 2019, is the 230th Anniversary of the swearing in of George Washington as our first President in New York City in 1789.

Thirty years ago, George H. W. Bush commemorated the bicentennial of that first inauguration two centuries earlier, and the feeling was that the Presidency had finally overcome the crisis and tragedy of Richard Nixon, fifteen years earlier.

Now, however, 30 years later, the Presidency of Donald Trump has set records for its corruption, venality, crudeness, destruction of the American domestic and foreign policy created by earlier Presidents of both parties, and has just passed the 10,000 mark for lies and deception, as reported by the Washington Post.

The American Presidency is a great institution now under massive attack by evil people led by Donald Trump, who are systematically destroying the sense of an American Union, as they work to divide people by race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, gender, and sexual orientation and identity, and take away our basic civil liberties and civil rights and promote an authoritarian dictatorship led by a monarch who has no regard for American history and traditions.

America could be on the verge of a new civil war, as we have gratuitous gun violence, a repudiation of the immigrant tradition which made America the last great hope of mankind, and an ever increasing challenge of climate change that threatens the future of our children and grandchildren and beyond.

It is a time which is hard to have optimism about the future, and the urgency of defeating Donald Trump, and removing him from office peacefully is a mandate!

The next President needs to be a unifier, a man or woman of statesmanship who can promote our better instincts and inspire hope and optimism, who has the character of empathy and human decency to guide him or her through the tough readjustment we will have to experience in the 2020s.

95th Anniversary Of Woodrow Wilson’s Death: The Decline In Historical Reputation, Although Still In Top Quarter Of All Presidents

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On February 3, 1924, Woodrow Wilson, who had been in retirement only for nearly three years, died in his home, the Woodrow Wilson House, in Washington DC, at the age of 67.

Wilson had never fully recovered from the massive stroke he suffered on October 2, 1919, and he was unable to gain support of the US Senate for the Versailles Treaty and American membership in the League of Nation that he had fought for when he attended the Peace Treaty negotiations in France, the first President to travel overseas as America’s diplomat.

Wilson had accomplished much domestic legislation that was memorable, including the Federal Reserve Act, the Federal Trade Commission Act, the Clayton Antitrust Act, and the first federal labor laws.

But his record on racial segregation was horrendous, and he opposed the woman suffrage movement for a long time. He also presided over massive attacks on civil liberties during the First World War, totally intolerant of dissent.

And his mission to the Versailles Peace Conference ended in failure, as America did not join the League of Nations, and ratified its own peace treaty with Germany and the other nations on the losing side of the war.

Wilson’s reputation for his accomplishments kept him in the top ten of all Presidents for many decades, but lately he has come under fire, and his spot in the Presidential polls of scholars has declined. He is now out of the top ten at number 11 in the C Span Presidential Poll of historians conducted in 2017, after having earlier been number 6 in 2000, and number 9 in 2009. The American Political Science poll of Political Science professors had pegged Wilson at number 10 in 2014, and in 2018, he slipped to number 11, the same as the most recent C Span poll.

The troubling part is that Wilson fell behind Ronald Reagan and Lyndon B. Johnson in the recent polling, and is only 15 points ahead in the C Span 2017 poll over number 12, Barack Obama, just as he left the Presidency.

So do not be surprised that Wilson will likely slip to number 12 in the next polling, with Obama surging ahead of him, as Obama looks ever better in comparison to Donald Trump, who ended up at the bottom of the APSA 2018 poll as number 44 out of 44.

Is George H. W. Bush The “Best” One Term President In American History, Surpassing James K. Polk, And What About Jimmy Carter?

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Now that George H. W. Bush is part of American history, the question arises whether he should be judged the “best” one term President in American history.

We have had the following 12 one term elected Presidents who finished their term, but were not given a second term:

John Adams
John Quincy Adams
Martin Van Buren
James K. Polk
Franklin Pierce
James Buchanan
Rutherford B. Hayes
Benjamin Harrison
William Howard Taft
Herbert Hoover
Jimmy Carter
George H. W. Bush

Eight of them, all but Polk, Pierce, Buchanan, and Hayes were defeated for reelection, with those four choosing not to run, and all of these four, except Polk, very unpopular and aware that they were not wanted to be nominated for another term.

The usual viewpoint has been that James K. Polk, with the acquisition of the American Southwest by war with Mexico, and acquisition of the Pacific Northwest by the Oregon treaty with Great Britain, was the most successful one term President. Labeled an expansionist and an imperialist by many, the fact that he presided over the greatest expansion of US territory since Thomas Jefferson, has helped him to be regarded by scholars as a “successful” President, rated 12 to 14 in scholarly polls.

Now, some are saying that George H. W. Bush may be greater than Polk, due to his foreign policy accomplishments in particular, including the end of the Cold War, the unification of Germany, and the Persian Gulf War, along with his domestic policies of “A Thousand Points Of Light”, and the Americans With Disabilities Act.

Some on this list, including Van Buren, Pierce, Buchanan, Hayes, Benjamin Harrison, Taft, and Hoover are seen in a poor light, while J. Q. Adams is seen as not having succeeded in his one term, although a great man, and his father, John Adams, criticized for the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798, curbing civil liberties during his term.

The only other one term President who could be seen as competing would be Jimmy Carter, with his Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel, the Panama Canal Treaty, his Human Rights advocacy, his creation of new cabinet agencies (Departments of Education, Health And Human Services, Energy), and his exceptional record on the environment, but his negatives, including high inflation, the Iranian hostage crisis, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the Cuban Mariel Boat Lift all help to undermine his case.

So, one could argue that Polk and Bush may be competitive as the “best” one term elected President, without a clear cut answer to the question of who was the better President.

It might be best to say that Polk was the best 19th century one term elected President, while Bush was the best 20th century one term elected President, with Jimmy Carter as the runner up in that regard.

Brennan Center For Justice: 19 States With New Voting Restrictions Since 2016

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The William Brennan Center For Justice, named after the great former Supreme Court Justice, tracks violations of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, and has exposed the reality that 19 states, since the Supreme Court backtracked on the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in a decision in 2013, have made the right to vote much more difficult, and affecting election results.

In 2016, 14 states had new voting restrictions in place for the first time in a presidential election, with these states including Alabama, Arizona, Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Ohio, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin.

In 2017, Arkansas, North Dakota, Missouri, Georgia, and Iowa added new laws.

So 8 Southern states of the old Confederacy (Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas, Tennessee, Virginia) are back where they were before the Voting Rights Act of 1965, making it harder for blacks and other people of color, and poor people in general, to be able to have the chance to vote.

But also, the 8 Midwestern states of Ohio, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, Wisconsin, North Dakota, Nebraska and Kansas have gown down the same road.

And Arizona in the West and New Hampshire and Rhode Island on the Atlantic Coast also have made it more difficult to vote.

Look at this list of states, and notice almost all of them, except Virginia, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island voted for Donald Trump.

So we have the possibility that despite public opinion polls that indicate a “Blue Wave”, the restrictions on voting rights could impact election result in November.

The Urgent Democratic Platform For 2020: 30 Goals For The Next Decade

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What MUST be part of the Democratic Party platform in 2020, no matter who is the Democratic Presidential nominee?

In no special order, it MUST include:

Medicare for all Americans of all ages
$15 minimum wage by 2022 everywhere in America and Paid Family Leave
Free public university and college tuition for the first two years or 60 credits of higher education
Wiping out of college debt which prevents many young people from marrying, having children, buying a home, having a future
Repeal of Citizens United, which has allowed corporations to be called people, and destroy political campaigns with large donations, and instead promote public financing of campaigns
Responsible Gun Control legislation
Protection of Women’s Rights, including abortion rights
Enforcement of gay and lesbian and transgender rights
A responsible immigration reform program, reversing the damage done by Donald Trump, Jeff Sessions, John Kelly, Kirstjen Nielsen, Stephen Miller and Thomas Homan
Revival of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties that have been curbed by Donald Trump
Protection of the Social Safety Net of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid
Labor Rights promoted, including prevention of “right to work” laws
Environmental regulations revived and strengthened
Consumer Rights revived and strengthened
Investment in infrastructure across America
Condemnation of violations of human rights in other nations, including Russia, China, Turkey, Egypt, the Philippines and elsewhere
Revival of NATO alliance and other alliances that have been weakened in the Trump Presidency
The end of protectionist tariffs, which undermine the American economy
Strengthening of relations with Cuba, and attempts to overcome strains and tensions with Iran, and revive the Iran Nuclear Deal
Promoting total separation of church and state, with religion not being promoted by government
Reenactment of responsible corporation and Wall Street reforms
Protection of Native American lands and properties
Criminal Justice Reforms for those not involved in violent Crimes
National restoration of Voting Rights to former convicts who have paid their debt to society
Decriminalizing Drug Use and Sales, so as to overcome the Opioid Crisis, and allow Medicinal Marijuana without penalty
Promoting funding for the Arts and Culture across America
Dealing with poverty and homelessness in America
Hurricane Relief for Puerto Rico and move toward statehood as the 51st state
Tax Reform to require a fair and equitable tax system for all, not just the wealthy
Reviving respect for Freedom of Speech and Freedom of the Press

Would all of these 30 “planks” be successfully accomplished in the term of the next Democratic President from 2021-2025? Most certainly, highly unlikely, but these must be the goals of the next Democratic administration, as we attempt to recover from the disaster and tragedy of the Donald Trump nightmare!

The Danger Of A Manufactured Or Real September 11 Equivalent Crisis Leading To Donald Trump Declaring Martial Law And Suspending The Constitution And Bill of Rights

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After the debacle of yesterday, all Americans must be concerned about the danger of a manufactured or real September 11 equivalent crisis leading to Donald Trump declaring martial law, and suspending the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

The danger of a terrorist attack is still present, but also, no one can trust Donald Trump in planning a “Reichstag Fire” incident to allow him to become an authoritarian dictator, as occurred in Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler in 1933.

The one third base would willingly give up their civil liberties and civil rights, with their blind and inane loyalty to Trump, and we could see a crackdown much greater than the two “Red Scares” that occurred in 1919-1920 under Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer after World War I, and under Senator Joseph McCarthy from 1950-1954, as well as the civil liberties violations under Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War.

It is urgent that more Republicans in Congress speak out and demand action against the abuses of power of Donald Trump, and his national security and intelligence officials need to work together to force Vice President Mike Pence and the cabinet to meet and take action under the 25th Amendment, Section 4, but it seems highly unlikely that any of this will happen.

So civil war is a terrifying possibility, not out of the realm of reality, and could make the Civil War of 150 years ago repeat itself, with the danger of widespread bloodshed, something that all government officials should work to avoid, by putting the nation over the loyalty to one man. Trump is a true demagogue who is the greatest danger to our nation in American history, as a lackey of a foreign power that wishes to weaken and divide us.

Why did Donald Trump insist on being alone with Vladimir Putin of Russia, and making decisions that no one else can be aware of, and his refusal to listen to top officials who warned him against what he was doing? What deep, dark secret is Donald Trump harboring that endangers our nation? Why is he giving aid and comfort to our enemies, a clear sign of treason?

This is not hyperbole, but real time alarm being expressed not just by this author, but by millions of patriotic Americans who treasure our Constitution and Bill of Rights, and all of the strides forward that have been made over two centuries to make the Founding Fathers’ experiment improve the lives and fortunes of our nation in both domestic and foreign policy.

Donald Trump, The “Manchurian Candidate”, And Vladimir Putin: The Downfall Of The Western Alliance System

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The idea is finally sinking in that Donald Trump is similar to the main character in the 1962 film, “The Manchurian Candidate”, a candidate for President planted by the enemy of America.

His constant praise of Vladimir Putin of Russia, and his constant criticism of the leaders of Canada, Germany, France, Great Britain, and other allies in NATO makes one come to this conclusion as a rational thought, as the Western alliance system is in danger of disintegration.

His worship of the authoritarian leaders of China, North Korea, Turkey, Egypt and the Philippines among other dictators, is further proof that Donald Trump despises democracy, civil liberties, the Constitution and Bill of Rights, and the traditions of American history in both domestic and foreign policy.

So for someone to assert that Donald Trump is dangerous to America’s present and future, is not just political hyperbole.

We are in a situation where Russia clearly intervened in the 2016 Presidential election, and is attempting to influence the 2018 Midterm Elections for Congress and the state governments, and is looking ahead to the Presidential Election of 2020.

The thought that Donald Trump might just win a second term, and then challenge the 22nd Amendment, and wish to stay on as President for life, is not just an idle thought, and everyone must work together to insure that such does not happen.